The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

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Warm greetings, everyone.

Welcome.

And today's topic is action.

It will be action in relationship to compassion, compassionate action.

But for the beginning of this meditation, I want to emphasize that action is a very important part of the Buddha's teachings.

Sometimes he was called a Kammavada, a teacher of action.

And he has this wonderful statement that beings are owners of their own karma.

Owners of their action, they are inheritors of their action.

The actions are their source, they originate in their actions.

Actions are their relatives and actions are refuge.

So the actions are refuge, actions are our relatives.

It's like part of our family, it's intimate, it's close.

The actions are the source from which our life flows and develops.

Actions, we inherit our actions, we inherit the consequence of our actions.

And we own our actions where the consequence is the really our own to work with.

It's a powerful statement.

And it can be a little bit frightening, I think, that we are the owners of our actions and we inherit the consequence of our actions because we know, are we careful of what we do.

But actions can be our relatives, our cherished family, action can be our refuge and our protection.

And meditation is a long history in Buddhism of meditation being considered a form of action.

Since often meditation is associated with sitting still, laying still, being still.

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